SteamVR Now Supports Oculus Touch Controllers

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It seems that those diligent boffins over at Valve have quietly released an update to their SteamVR platform which includes support for Oculus’ Touch motion controllers.

The disparity between experiences available on the two main competing VR systems on the PC, the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift are largely defined by their ability to track your hands in VR. The Vive, powered by Valve’s SteamVR included motion controllers in the box, underpinned by the its Lighthouse laser tracking system. Oculus’ solution to hand presence in VR however is yet to ship, with it’s excellent Touch controllers due to ship later this year.

Now, SteamVR has received an update which allows Oculus’ Touch controllers to be used with SteamVR and, apparently, pre-existing HTC Vive titles – even those built for the platform’s SteamVR controllers. Although we’ve not been able to independently verify this as yet. An image tweeted by Daniel Nyberg, shows both icons denoting Oculus Touch connectivity but also dual Oculus sensors (the second of which will ship with Touch controllers to improve coverage and negate occlusion).

This update is significant as it means that, once Oculus touch controllers do eventually ship, users of those devices won’t be restricted to motion control titles available only on Oculus’ proprietary content portal ‘Home’, expected to receive up to 30 Touch enabled titles this year. It also underlines Valve’s continuing commitment to ensure that regardless of your choice of VR hardware, you’ll be able to play SteamVR enabled games. Do note however that OpenVR, the API developers can use to access SteamVR functionality, still requires Steam to be installed and running in order to work.

As of now, users of Oculus Home can only play VR titles on that platform with Oculus Hardware, something the company has received criticism for in recent months.

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I’ll never understand why people think Oculus is capable of doing business in the same manner as Valve. Valve has a near monopoly on PC game sales. This is where their revenue comes from. Anything they can do to encourage this to continue is to their benefit.

The moment Valve made their own headset supported by platform monopoly they forced Oculus to create their own ecosystem in order to survive. If not for their clever partnership with HTC and their insistent support of Oculus software and hardware, they’d be tied up in the courts for exploiting their market position unfairly. If they had just stayed out of the headset market this whole thing would be moot. If there’s a villain here it’s Valve.

Matt R

Yeah Valve you evil scumbags. Will here ^ has called you out on your sneaky consumer friendly shenanigans. What do you have to say about that?

My point is that the correct way to treat the consumer would be for Valve to have stayed out of the headset market in the first place avoiding all of this. Monopoly holders entering markets supported by their monopoly are a malevolent force on the market by nature. This is why Microsoft was barred from manufacturing computers when that market was developing. It would have crippled the industry. I just think it’s funny that no one mentions this when it comes to Valve.

Matt R: “Are you paying attention Oculus”

I’m sure they are, being helpless to compete in the manner you suggest, bullied by the monopoly holder in the market they attempted to join. Their only choice for survival is to create a separate ecosystem. This is obviously far from ideal and the last thing that they desired to do. Do you think they ever dreamed when sharing all of their ideas with Valve that they would be stabbed in the back, shortly before entering the market? They were counting on Valve for support, and now they’re stuck grasping at a blade between their shoulders, stumbling around in the dark looking for a way out. Sad really.

Myspare Spamemail

Exactly.

How dare Valve give everything including in the end key staff to Oculus to get their stolen CV1 up and running.

Just like how Oculus stole Zenimax tech and then key staff before.

How dare Valve allow continuation of this commie b.s of an open PC platform that was already fought and won many years ago.

No, not really. If Valve had wanted an open platform they would have never made a headset. They alienated every hardware manufacturer in the universe by exploiting their position as monopoly holder in PC game sales, and created a competitor in Oculus where there was none before.

Valve never signaled any intention to enter the market when they were meeting with Oculus and sharing ideas. It’s clear they duped poor Palmer and created the hostile environment you now complain about.

Mostly I think it’s funny that no one is acknowledging Valve’s part in all of this. In any debate it can be useful to over-simplify, over-state, or otherwise aggravate your opponent. I always hope not to delve too far into these waters while still maintaining integrity and fostering discussion.

Bryan Ischo

Valve has a part in this for sure; but it’s not the part you’re claiming they have.

Valve probably didn’t do a very good job of working to create a common truly open VR framework (by which I mean openvr) that Oculus felt it could participate in without being at Valve’s whim. From what I have heard from actual developers, Oculus’ SDK is better designed that Valve’s SDK, and one would think that Valve could have recognized that and tried harder to work to create an API that had more in common, in order to entice Oculus to join together on creating an open standard, than they did. It was probably some hubris and NIH-syndrom on Valve’s part.

“If Valve had wanted an open platform they would never have made a headset”. Because they own the platform.

Tanner

You have a very…interesting idea of what a monopoly is. And also the history of the modern VR HMD development. Valve and Oculus were in collaboration early on until facebook bought Oculus.. that is when they split paths. Valve employee Alan Yates said that Oculus used much of Valve’s concepts in the Rift. Not the other way around. It is amusing that you slam Valve for being a monopoly (they’re not) and then call them bad guys for entering an industry that would have only had ONE company leading it, aka a monopoly.

Steam is a monopoly. They hold 75% market capitalization. It’s clear. As clear as Microsoft ever was in the PC OS game, or Google is in the search game. All stop just short of pushing beyond a 75% share and causing monopoly law to fall on their heads, but all effectively exercise the benefits of monopoly.

I’m not suggesting that Valve stole ideas from Oculus, or even the other way around. I don’t care. It was an example of the good faith exhibited between the two parties that Valve would not enter the marketplace.

I believe if Oculus had been left by Valve to enter the marketplace it would have still allowed an environment of healthy competition to arise, but whether Oculus would have ended up with an eventual monopoly of it’s own in hardware sales, I think one thing us clear: they would have never fragmented the PC platform by creating their own ecosystem in order to survive the owner of the ecosystem they intended to enter creating their own competing hardware, which is what everyone seems to be griping about.

Personally I just think it’s funny and have no problem with it; I’m just making an observation. I’ve had to buy an XBOX, a Playstation, a Nintendo and a PC to play all the games I wanted to. I’d probably own a Sega if they still made them. Would it be cool if one system played all of these games so I could avoid this? Sure. Maybe they could even throw in a discount while they’re at it, but I don’t expect them to. In truth, most of the money is in software, not hardware. If all of these companies unified their hardware and focused on making games they’d all come out on top in the end, but that’s not the nature of the market (though, perhaps sometime around the Singularity…).

KDmP_Raze

You think 75% market capitalization means monopoly? No one is suing Nvidia right now who have more than that in the AiB market…

75% of the market stops 1% short of monopoly law. It’s why so many companies rest there, Nvidia included. It provides all the benefits of a monopoly and none of the legal headaches. Of course, it also depends on the potential market your monopoly poses; if you corner the market on sh!t sandwiches no one really cares.

Bryan Ischo

You do understand the difference between the Coca-Cola corporation having a monopoly on soft drinks versus a “monopoly” on selling diet Coke right?

Valve has no “monopoly”. There are a million ways to distribute PC games, and many many very successful ones have had nothing to do with Valve or steam.

Coca-Cola hovers around 50% market share both in the US and worldwide. Not a monopoly as addressed by economic theory or regulations, but strong nonetheless, of course. There are certain markets where both Pepsi and Coke hold absolute monopolies and that is an interesting study. There’s a documentary called The Cola Wars about it that’s quite good.

Valve on the other hand holds 75% market share. (Anecdotally, not that it matters, I don’t personally know a single PC gamer who doesn’t purchase all of their games through Steam). 75%. There are multiple other players in the market who hold less than 10% each. The force they can exert on the market is orders of magnitude smaller. That’s why at around 3/4 share regulators start to become very interested in you.

Google recently broke up their own business into little pieces to preemptively avoid legal action from regulators similar to the kind Microsoft was subject to when they bundled Internet Explorer with Windows. Think about that. Their force in the market was such that bundling IE with Windows was considered an unfair practice in allowing them to compete in what was known as “the browser wars”. The browser wars. How goofy does that sound now that we’re in the middle of the VR wars? Valve’s actions skate very close to regulation without doubt. Perhaps if they had simply released their designs open source to manufacturers as Google does instead of profiting directly off their monopoly this would not be the case, but they have judged themselves to be able to take a step closer to the market and still avoid regulation; I believe they are correct. $3.5 billion in sales per year will get you a lot of lawyers I guess.

I think the biggest problem with people seeing this thing clearly is that they like Valve. Very much so and sincerely. Somehow despite their “F” grade from the Better Business Bureau. And despite their position as a giant in the market. People seem to really identify with them as the underdog, those guys who made Half-Life in their basement and turned the game industry on it’s head. The guys who saw clearly that people would want to buy their games over the Internet just like they bought their songs, even when no one believed them, and went for it. More than this, people hate Facebook. They want Facebook to lose. They want Valve to win. So they turn their eyes from the actions of one and focus on the other.

Personally I don’t think either Valve or Oculus is devil or saint; I’m just offering an alternative to what seems to be the mainstream view of Valve as plucky underdog. They clearly hold the balance of power here, and when they started throwing their weight around in the space they caused the market fragmentation everyone complains about.

Full_Name

Odd, I buy games through Origin, Microsoft App Store, Uplay etc too. All games are not available on Steam. They also don’t demand you buy games from them, and you often have other places you can buy them if you so choose. It’s not like Windows, where if you don’t have Windows, you can’t run Windows apps. If you don’t have Steam, you can almost always buy the games elsewhere, if nothing else on disk – so Steam is not a monopoly by any stretch.

ummm…

i think he is confusing the trust/loyalty of consumers; the years building the brand, and the superior product for a monopoly. it is like saying american fighters have a monopoly because everyone wants them. or hard food has a monopoly over liquid food because most people deserve it. steam “strong” because on aggregate it delivers product better than other gaming sites, in general terms.

ummm…

he thinks a better product, a longer operation history etc. means monopoly – or something like that – who knows.

ummm…

a) apple had a huge market share in smartphones because they had a better product. i buy from gamersgates, gog etc. etc. as well as steam, but you know what, many times they just link back to steam and have smaller catalogs, less capital, and therefore offer less discounts/community etc. of course there are things about steam (game licenses instead of ownership/bad customer service) but you are trying to push an argument that is either not true or weak. you also should understand the definition of monopoly. there are competitors – just no killer ones yet. android took a while to move on the great gains of apple – and lets hope oculus doesn’t shoot themselves in the foot by CLOSING their platform further. remember – android did well by OPENING it.

b)your comments re: the competition between platforms makes me thing you believe oculus had RIGHT to build a MONOPOLY in VR, backed by valve tech and facebook money. UTTERLY BAFFLING.

c)gaming consoles are NOT the pc. gaming consoles are also PROTECTED in ways that a PC is not – and have a VASTLY DIFFERENT culture. gaming consoles are NOT peripherals. gaming consoles dont have THEIR WHOLE CATALOG OF GAMES BEHIND A WALL! only a couple of system sellers which when not obtained hardly diminish the value of the console.

a) Apple gained their success by providing a closed market. The exact tactic Oculus seeks to exploit. Android is truly open source, this seems to be a tactic Steam feigns at. So far Oculus and Valve are occupying opposite sides of the metophor you suggest.

b) I don’t think anyone has a right to a monopoly. I think Valve should have released their designs open source like Google does instead of exploiting their own monopoly in PC game distribution.

c) VR systems lie somewhere between a game console and a peripheral; they are really neither. No peripheral costs $600 – $800. This is much more similar to a console. As is the amount of R&D needed to bring them to market and the amount of support required once deployed. Given these constraints the business practices employed will tend to be quite similar to the console market – particularly as they become more all-in-one as John Carmacks’ vision of an inside-out mobile headset comes to fruition.

d) So far it seems you are right; you don’t understand me. Perhaps as we continue you may come to.

FastRDust

there is 1 reason i don’t see occulus and HTC vive as a console.

you need a pc to play the games, sure you also need the headset but does that also mean when a game only supports a controller that the controller also is a vague console?

the pricing on that point also does not matter imho because a monitor also has the same pricing and is also mandatory to play games.

in that regard the set that is needed is comparable to the monitor + controller set to play games.

needless to say that experiences may differ. :)

Full_Name

closed market = monopoly

Full_Name

So what are you saying? You think the ideal solution would have been only Oculus had a headset, and games would be sold on Steam? Both of those are monopoly situations.

If it wasn’t for the fact that Oculus basically kicked Valve out after Facebook bought them up, Valve would probably have been much more detached from the whole process, but when it became clear that Oculus wanted to not only build a head-set but their own complete eco-system, Valve really didn’t have much choice other than partnering with someone else and help them. It’s important to note that Valve is not selling HMD’s themselves. HTC just happened to be the first one that was interested in using their tech. Later on, more will come. Looks like OSVR might be working with Lighthouse, and SteamVR supports them too – so you see, SteamVR and their store is pretty much equivalent to Android and their store, while Oculus is more like the iphone. Another difference between Valve and Oculus? When Valve supports game development, they not only let the developers implement Rift support, they even allow them to sell it on other stores, like the Oculus store.

ummm…

forgetting other points in his argument, i do think it is funny that he sees valve as the robber baron and facebook as a helpless vr non profit

Bryan Ischo

Oculus could make a headset that works on any platform that can deliver software to it; that could be their business. They could make their own store front if they want as a means to compete with Valve’s store front, but there’s no reason to lock their hardware to it.

Oculus are not competing with any “monopolies” here. HTC is not Valve, and HTC makes the headset. Valve is clearly agnostic to the headsets although they did work with HTC early to bring an integrated solution to the market.

Oculus should never have made a store front to begin with and should have just created the best headset possible, then made their money on selling tons of that headset. It’s only because they couldn’t create a competitive headset *in the same timeframe as Valve/HTC* that they have to play this exclusive software game.

The Rift does work with any platform that can deliver software to it; it works with Steam, you just can’t use other headsets with Oculus Home.

Valve is utilizing HTC as a hardware partner to skirt monopoly law.

Valve forced Oculus to create their own marketplace in order to survive. Oculus’ business model depended on being able to reach Valve’s audience. When Valve created their own headset they sucked all of the oxygen out of the room.

Bryan Ischo

My post was convoluted for sure and my point that Oculus should simply focus on making the best hardware and win or lose based on that, rather than trying to own a store, was kind of lost in it.

However, this I cannot possibly agree with:

“Valve is utilizing HTC as a hardware partner to skirt monopoly law.”

If that was Valve’s aim, why wouldn’t they make Steam games exclusive to the Vive? If their goal was to maintain some kind of “monopoly position” why in the world would they leave the door so open for hardware competition from Oculus *in their own store*???

Seriously your position makes no sense.

Much more logical is the notion that Valve wanted to create a new games market – VR games – and decided that helping to jumpstart it by partnering with a hardware company to create an early viable VR hardware option was the best way. But of course since they’re really interested in just selling games regardless of headset, they are happy to let Oculus be used with their store.

The fact that Revive exists proves that you don’t even need to distribute any VR game that uses SteamVR *on steam*, therefore Valve isn’t even doing anything to shore up this false “monopoly” you are claiming that they have in PC games distribution by the tools they have available to them. They could have written steamvr such that it wouldn’t even work with any game not delivered via the steam store. But they didn’t. Why? Because they are not trying to extend a nonexistent PC games distribution “monopoly” to VR as you claim they are.

As the monopoly holder, if they employed the same protectionist policies as Oculus, they would open themselves to litigation. They cannot limit games to being used with the Vive for this reason.

They hold the same position in their market as Microsoft and Google do in theirs. All are monopoly holders. All are very skilled at circumnavigating legal action while still exploiting their position. Their complacency as a monopolist has led to an “F” grade from the Better Business Bureau. It’s real.

Bryan Ischo

You have no argument then. You can’t say “Oculus has to use exclusives to compete with Valve’s monopoly” at the same time as you say “Valve can’t use its monopoly to complete unfairly with Oculus”. If the latter is true, then the former CANNOT BE TRUE.

Wait, are you asserting that the Vive is not a Valve product simply because they partnered with HTC for manufacturing? Are you saying that it won’t be granted infinitely greater access to Steam customers through 0$ advertising and brand association? Really? That Valve isn’t snorting lines of dollars off the top of every sale?

Even if it wouldn’t raise the ire of monopoly regulators for them to lock other headsets out of their platform, they don’t need to. They’re the monopoly holder. That’s the point. It’s why actions like this are regulated against, and why they took the path they did to bring their hardware to market.

Felix Andersen

“Wait, are you asserting that the Vive is not a Valve product simply because they partnered with HTC for manufacturing?”

I hope you’re aware that Valve also shared the same tech with Oculus, even installed a “Valve room” at Oculus HQ. Oculus then went and sold out to Facebook with all that. So that obviously makes the Rift a Valve product as well. Oculus is snorting lines of coke off the top of every sale etc. pp
Oculus decided on their own to not partner with Valve and instead backstab them. We have seen firsthand how their executives like Palmer Luckey outright lied directly into the face of the community. Of course you can continue to defend their disgusting actions, but don’t expect many people to follow your train of thoughts.

I think you’ve found what John Hodgman would call the crux of this case, Felix: people like Valve. They hate Facebook. This colors everything.

This is my understanding of the situation:

Oculus and Valve shared research with each other back when Valve said they would never enter the headset market. Then Valve forced Oculus to change their business model when they brought their own headset to market, taking advantage of owning the largest PC game distribution channel. Oculus had to go back on some of their promises to survive.

Do you disagree? What have they done that’s so disgusting? I’ve never read anywhere that Valve offered to partner with Oculus and Oculus turned them down, only that they were sharing research because Valve had no intention of making a headset but wanted to encourage the market so they could make more software sales through Steam.

ummm…

im not a huge steam fan. id rather have a dvd case. id rather have better customer service. id rather A LOT of things change. you are just reaching – once again.

he is exasperating. i have had the wrong argument many many many times in my life. this is how i look when i keep defending them – ridiculous. maybe he needs to argue his point better, but i think it is a losing game.

valve helped CREATE the oculus. maybe they should have left palmer in his room to figure it out. then you wouldn’t have to worry. as for skirting monopoly laws – i have a company, when i surrender my revenue flow to a third party to “skirt monopoly law” (which isn’t applying the concept correctly) you LOSE CONTROL OVER THAT REVENUE. ridiculous.

Valve’s hand in the success is questionable. They had massive funding and the help of many geniuses in the tech world before their friendly relationship with Valve led the the sharing of research between both companies. Luckey was not in “his room”. He was in a giant R&D lab surrounded by the best and brightest.

Tomas Sandven

I’ve read this thread this far and I have a question. You’re saying that Valve forced Oculus to create their walled garden in order to survive. But how exactly is a walled garden making Oculus more profitable? You said yourself that Oculus relies on software sales in order to be profitable, so why wall your software away and only make it available on a HMD that only a minority of VR users own? Wouldn’t Oculus make (way) more money if they opened their store so that users of other HMDs could buy their games as well? Additionally they would come off as more user friendly and gain PR points.

I can’t see any other reason for the closed garden except for Oculus being greedy and short sighted.

You could argue that a closed garden makes it easier to quality control, as is the case with Apple products. I can’t possibly imagine that being worth locking three quarters of your potential customers out though.

Mike Hardy

Oculus always planned for a VR store… Some Oculus sotware has been in development for 2+ years. And where is the rumor coming from that the Oculus Rift isn’t a competitive headset. Are we ignoring sales or something? I don’t get it. It sounds like a bunch of people who don’t like the Oculus Rift sitting in a small echo chamber saying to themselves “You know, the Rift isn’t competitive” over and over to each other. While everyone in the real world has no idea what they’re talking about.

The Rift is better in some games than the Vive due to the increased screen clarity for seeing things in the distance. The software is more stable and polished. The ergonomics are better. And Vive does other things better. I think they’re both competitive. However I definitely prefer the Touch controllers.

Bryan Ischo

If they felt they had a competitive headset, they wouldn’t try to rely on exclusives to sell it. And no, I’m not ignoring sales; I don’t think those numbers are known but aren’t the current estimates approximately 3 to 1 in favor of the Vive? That’s what I’ve read …

They don’t have a competitive headset on features at this point. That is not even arguable. That’s why I said “maybe in a year”. Could even be “maybe in 6 months” but Oculus delivery track record doesn’t allow me that kind of optimism yet.

Screen and comfort are subjective evaluations that give neither headset the advantage at this point. I say this after having read hundreds of reviews and opinions. Seriously you cannot say that one or the other ‘wins’ in those categories.

Software polish – I would agree to give Oculus the edge here. Except that Valve’s storefront is much more useful and has tons more features. So Oculus wins on polish, Valve wins on storefront features. I’d call that a wash too.

So at this point, I think the only objectively significant difference between the two is the features that Vive has (room scale and motion controls) that Oculus does not.

Therefore, I think it’s fair to say that the Oculus Rift is not competitive, for those objectively measuring the devices.

However, in time Oculus will reach feature parity and be competitive.

Hence my statements.

ummm…

that is if oculus backs off of its insistence on the seated experience. i have a vive but i have respect for oculus. however, that respect does not make me blind. i think oculus owners or fans are just feeling left out in the cold and there is a backlash. i for one would LOVE to see BOTH HMDs thrive. binaries are everywhere in tech; apple/android for smartphones; apple/microsoft for OS; xbox/ps4 for consoles etc. etc. And there is still plenty of room for more. there just isnt an excuse that oculus can give me to get me to sell my vive and pick up an oculus. OPEN PLATFORMS SHOULD BE SUPPORTED IN THE 21 CENTURY. if facebook/oculus can’t compete otherwise then maybe they should have never let valve help them build the tech because they weren’t ready to play in the market.

ummm…

the small screen clarity gain may be negligable when focusing in game. listen, we all made an educated decision. oculus had the peoples hearts and facebooks money. to pretend that the position they are in now is because of PR ignores the great efforts and tech that valve and HTC put into the vive (AND GAVE TO OCULUS) while ANSWERING THE PEOPLES VISION OF VR!

Sorry, missed this earlier. There’s no way for Oculus to be successful based on hardware sales alone. Their $2 billion sale assured this. They absolutely needed the software sales that Valve is now siphoning, not to mention the hardware sales. The strategy they’ve employed is their only hope, which is why they’ve done so.

ummm…

what siphoning? oculus developed content is ONLY AVAILABLE ON OCULUS HOME. is valve supposed to apologize if oculus HARDWARE users want OTHER choices? wow just wow. what world are you living in? marxism does fit in everywhere.

The siphoning would refer to all of the sales of games which currently work only for Valve’s own headset. I’m not advocating Marxism. Avoiding misuse of monopoly is as capitalist as it gets.

Full_Name

The only reason steamvr games don’t work with the Rift is because Oculus hasn’t started shipping the Touch yet. SteamVR actually fully supports the touch even, but you can hardly blame Valve for Oculus being incompetent and not delivering the Touch with the Rift, what they should have done in the first place?

Full_Name

so why are you bitching about Valve helping with hardware and selling software, when you yourself are saying that Oculus had full intention of making/selling hardware and selling software in their own store front??

Felix Andersen

“Valve to have stayed out of the headset market in the first place avoiding all of this”

Haha. Maybe Oculus should’ve stayed out of the software market in the first place to avoid all of this?
By the way, HTC is the hardware manufacturer, just for your information :) Only Oculus went from a pure hardware manufacturer to meddling with games and software distribution. Understandable, since they are owned by Facebook, and Facebook needs software to sneak in. ;)

I suppose Alexander Graham Bell should have stayed out of the network business when coming to market with the telephone? Hard to sell a product when there’s no way to use it.

Oculus would have been happy enough to let Valve handle software distribution. It’s a much streamlined business model, and no one could do it better for them than Valve. Valve could’ve continued to strengthen their core business, and grown with VR sales.

Valve could have even released any specifications they have to the public, Google-style, instead of funneling the profit to themselves, partnering directly with a hardware manufacturer and capitalizing on the captive audience they possess to push it onto them and alienate Oculus along with every other potential manufacturer if their intention was to actually foster some utopian VR future as some suggest.

Eventually Oculus will probably move to distribution through Facebook now I would guess, when the market matures. Much the better to reach your parents with. But for those moaning about the PC platform being fragmented, I say the blame rests solely with Valve.

Bryan Ischo

Well I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree then. Despite our differences of opinion I respect your ability to discuss the issue rationally and logically and hope that we can all join hands together someday in a world of perfect VR harmony :)

“You have invented this weird fantasy where Oculus was playing perfectly fair ball and the evil Valve corporation decided to screw them over. In your weird fantasy world hardware manufacturers can’t make money either and all of them have to try to capture software dollars via storefront too.”

I’m going to respond to your original post because I think it’s important. Oculus is in a unique case in the hardware market because their entire business model and the sale of their company rested largely on software sales.

Hardware generally carries a maximum of 10% gross profit, though routinely falls to around 5%. If there are software sales targeted from the sale of this hardware, they may even be sold at a loss in order to encourage adoption.

Oculus was sold at $2 billion. If they were to actually survive on hardware alone they would never return to the black. The investment made in them was just too large. And that’s just the initial investment. Hardware sales with those margins could even keep up with the operating costs of a company fully geared to supply a full scale software stream to their devices.

Software is just a completely different level of scale when it comes to sales. You might sell 1,000,000 hardware units at $50 profit each; 10% of $500. You’ve netted $50,000,000 from your hardware. Consider the difference made if each of these hardware units were to lead to 10 software sales that net you $10 each. That’s $100,000,000. Twice the profit. See how it could matter if your business was depending on this?

As to what I think of Valve and Oculus, strangely I touched on this in my last response to you, but I don’t ascribe much moral weight to either, though I do find Valve’s actions to be very interesting. They stated to not be interested in entering the hardware market while sharing information with Oculus, then did so anyway. Perhaps all is fair in love, war, and business, but that seems like a calculated decision to me. Keep your friends close…

Bryan Ischo

Huh. I didn’t think you’d get to see my original post which I quickly thought the better of. I went too far I think in impugning your perception of the market. Well anyway, while you haven’t convinced me, I will be looking at Valve’s actions with greater scrutiny in future.

If what you say is true though, then I think it means simply that Oculus sold to Facebook on a promise that they couldn’t deliver without an implicit need to fragment the VR software market. That to me is a very nefarious decision to have made for a company who had previously to that been crowing about wanting to advance the nascent VR industry. While it may be true that Oculus *has to* do what they’re doing to try to justify the billions they took from Facebook, it doesn’t really change my opinion of their actions. Kind of like, if you have to go to war to justify having built up a military. Perhaps you shouldn’t have built up that military to begin with …

I get email notifications so I always see the original version of everyone’s post. Don’t feel bad; it shows you’re a thoughtful person.

At the time Oculus was sold to Facebook there was every reason to believe their promise would bear out. It was only when the owner of the market they intended to use to compete decided to step into direct competition with them, exploiting their ownership of the market. I actually thought of an metaphor which I will attempt not to stretch too far so as not to exacerbate the fact that all metaphors are imperfect, though I believe it could go a few useful places that I will not take it:

***

Harry and Carl live in a small oasis village in the middle of a desert. Everybody there rides horses, which Harry supplies. It’s a good life, but there’s something missing. One day, Carl realizes what it is: carts! So, Carl goes to Harry with his idea(which Harry thinks is great; it takes two horses to pull a cart!). Together Carl and Harry iron out Carl’s plan for each of their benefit; Harry gets to sell more horses, and Carl gets to change the world with carts and become rich in the process. After the plan is buttoned up, Carl goes off and gathers investors for his cart factory, perfecting the process and design and scale sufficient to sell everyone in the village a cart, and finally building the factory.

Once Carl’s ready to come to market he goes back to Harry with the great news. “Oh,” says Harry, “You’re still doing that? I’m actually going to make carts myself now. I’m going to sell them next to my horses. Oopsie. Good luck, sucker.”. What is Carl to do? His life’s work and his investors’ money is tied up in carts. It’s not like Harry can stop him from selling them, but it also seems clear that he’ll never be able to compete with Harry unless he changes something: his only hope is to start selling horses as well, even though everyone in the whole village already buys their horses from Harry, and to find every advantage he can while doing so. After all, Harry holds every conceivable advantage; he’s even managed to convince the townfolk his actions were noble and Carl is just a whiny little baby somehow. Oopsie indeed.

***

Not perfect, but I believe it describes the general concept.

Bryan Ischo

It all hinges on whether Oculus sold out to Facebook for $$$ in a surprise move which turned its back on its own partner at the time (Valve), forcing them to find another hardware partner to bring their (at this point superior) vision of VR to market, or if Oculus sold out to Facebook because Valve had already followed the script you wrote above and left them with no choice except to find someone with deep pockets willing to bet the bank on an exclusives store to make up for the loss of exclusivity they thought they had in the VR hardware market.

I think the former makes much more sense for so many reasons, each and every one of which is supported by the evidence provided by subsequent actions of Oculus and Valve; but you believe the latter.

I’ll just ask you point blank: do you really believe that Valve decided, for no apparent reason, to stiff Oculus, a partner that they had already made progress with on defining early VR technology, instead favoring a comely also-ran hardware company HTC, and for what benefit to themselves exactly? If Valve had originally planned to own the store while Oculus made the hardware, and apparently Oculus was OK with that, what was Valve’s motivation for switching hardware partners and turning Oculus into a competitor?

Why doesn’t it make more sense that it was Oculus who saw Facebook’s $$$ offer, and decided to take it, in the process destroying the cooperation it had with Valve when Valve quickly realized that there was no way Facebook was going to own a hardware company without itself trying to own the software distribution for it? Oculus had motive to take the $$$, Facebook had motive to try to compete with Steam for software revenues.

I can see rational motive for Oculus to screw Valve over in their partnership (Facebook $$$), I cannot see rational motive for Valve to screw Oculus over since it only meant choosing another hardware company to deliver what Oculus could have delivered just as easily.

Chance Knight

You should consider writing novels. You present arguments clearly, you search for metaphors and examples, you ascribe motive to action, and you have a strong grasp on grammar, as far as I can tell. I’ve been reading through this conversation, and though I must admit to not being able to verify the validity of any statement on either end, your points come off as convincing and well thought out. I won’t say that makes you correct, because I don’t have any knowledge on how markets operate or about business in general, but as an outside observer you came off as the most knowledgeable, which is a feat in itself. Which, as I was saying, would make you a great writer. I’d read a fictional book about cut throat business if you wrote it.

Thank you very much, that’s a high compliment. I can’t say I have any story ideas about cut throat business, but I do have a few novels, comic books, and scripts rolling around in my head. There’s some non-fiction stuff I’d find really compelling to work on as well. Time will tell if my mind is the only place these things will live out their days. Thanks again.

I feel like I definitely did not say that Facebook and Oculus invented the universe?

Full_Name

ah, so Valve should stick with software and not meddle with hardware, but Oculus who worked on hardware is perfectly fine working on software?? Oculus were not happy to do that, because as they have said themselves – we make money on our store, not on the headsets (not yet at least). They want to eventually have both a cut on the hardware AND a 30% cut on all software sold.

KDmP_Raze

“Do you think they ever dreamed when sharing all of their ideas with
Valve that they would be stabbed in the back, shortly before entering
the market?”

Wow, you actually see that scenario in the complete opposite of how it went down.

Oh? How’s that? Did Valve have some crucial new product coming to market that their entire companies success rested on when out of the blue a company they had previously been friendly with and relied on for a huge part of their upcoming business suddenly released a competing product capitalizing on the very marketplace they hoped to take part in? Wow I really must have missed something.

Bryan Ischo

Did Valve partner with HTC *because* of the Oculus split? Or did the Oculus split happen *because* Valve partnered with HTC?

Are you saying you know the answer to this question? You’re acting like you know so I guess you do know. So out with it then. Please explain the exact reason that Valve and Oculus’ partnership split, and please back it up with some facts, not just your conjecture. Thanks!

I’ve never professed to know the reason for the split, only that Valve is to blame for the current climate of fragmentation.

Bryan Ischo

Yes you did. Two posts above.

“Did Valve have some crucial new product coming to market that their
entire companies success rested on when out of the blue a company they
had previously been friendly with and relied on for a huge part of their
upcoming business suddenly released a competing product capitalizing on
the very marketplace they hoped to take part in?”

The “company they previously been friendly with” implies that this “out of the blue” action happened when they were working together and that this was the reason that Oculus and Valve split. Anyway that’s how I read what you wrote, maybe it’s not what you intended.

However you did say “Oculus’ business model depended on being able to reach Valve’s audience.” as if that were some kind of justification for Oculus Store. The simple fact is that Oculus is able to reach Valve’s audience by virtue of the Oculus Rift support in SteamVR. Therefore the need to reach Valve’s audience is not a reason for Oculus to create its own store.

And according to other admissions you’ve made already, *even if* Valve had some kind of monopoly on PC game distribution (which is an absurd notion on many levels), *it couldn’t use it* to lock Oculus away from its audience without facing legal action.

I can understand why you’d think that but it certainly was not what I meant. It seems clear that they split before Valve’s announcement to enter the headset market. I’d have to do some research to even guess what the reason was.

I cannot imagine that Valve would ever have indicated an intention to compete with Oculus when they began sharing research with each other. This trust informed Oculus’ decision making, and their evaluation and purchase at $2 billion; Valve with their market position in PC game distribution is almost certainly the only company which could have been considered a prospective competitor should they choose to attempt entering the market at such a late date. When they broke trust and chose to do so, they changed absolutely everything for Oculus.

The monopoly holder in a software platform needs to do very little to ensure the greatest chance at achieving monopoly with new hardware sectors which rely on their platform; this and the fact that an acheived monopoly in both software and hardware has closed an important loop and absolutely cemented locking competitors out of the market is the reason Microsoft was barred from manufacturing computers when that market was developing.

Neither does the monopoly holder in a software platform need to lock others out of their platform in order to achieve a hardware monopoly married to their software. Their monopoly alone supplies them advantages sufficient to guarantee success.

None of this matters of course if you don’t accept that 75% market share is sufficient to constitute a monopoly in either theory or practice.

ummm…

valve is to blame for fragmentation as oculus CLOSES off their content and fragments the market. wow

Even if all of that is true it was shared during a time when Valve professed no interest in entering the market, and shared for the purposes of, well, sharing . Like, for Oculus to use if it was useful. And that Valve room was more of a Lighthouse-like demonstration if I remember correctly, but with stickers everywhere instead of lasers.

All of this is beside my point, which is simple: Valve’s entry into the market forced Oculus to wall off their market to survive.

KDmP_Raze

It is true, Valve head of VR said it all and there were articles published about the incident. No refutation from Oculus about the statement from Valve. This was only like 2 months ago, so ample time to refute the statement if it was untrue. He said also, that the CV1 is basically a reskinned version of the HMD they initially supplied.

Gabe Newell never said anything like that as far as I know. You must be thinking of Alan Yates, who is an engineer working on the Lighthouse system? Perhaps if it had been Gabe and not some random employee speaking out, Oculus may have responded, or their lawyers would have. Either way, non-refutation is not an aknowledgement, it’s often just a wise move not to give out-of-hand comments more airplay than they deserve by making public arguments. Also, even if the thoughts of this one man are true, his words are far from damning. He said the Rift is largely derived from Valves research(at least some of which was done in tandem with Oculus), but noted that the tracking and lens systems were developed by Oculus. The tracking and lenses. An entire VR setup consists of a screen, lenses and tracking. So far Oculus is batting 2/3 then. Throw in all of their software innovations like time warp and I think it’s safe to say that if all Valve’s research lead to was the screen, this is a rather trivial conversation. It’s a cell phone screen.

Full_Name

I hope you don’t really think that a VR system only consists of tracking, screens and lenses…if so you need to seriously do some research in this area..

ummm…

“but valve you promised to give us the tech for our product so we can sell out to facebook (the wunderkind IPO) and save the world.”

…having poached Value staff to help them reach this point in time. And Valve helped created the DK2 motion tracking system that Oculus uses and the Vive tech enhanced. So I’d hardly say that your metaphysical blade was inflicted solely by the other party.

Oh, the metaphysical blade of which you speak, mine or otherwise, was most certainly issued solely by Valve. You see, it represents the trust broken by Valve’s entrance into the headset market.

In any case, Valve’s contributions to Oculus tech are largely self-reported, and had they stayed out of the hardware market it would be of little consequence regardless of their stature. Same applies to their human resources. And, I really don’t care. It was never my point.

KDmP_Raze

The proper way to compete with Steam is too look at EA and Origin. They looked at steam and their weaknesses and focused on delivering a MUCH stronger customer experience and it worked! Steam had terrible support and they capitalized on that. Before Origin release could you ever have thought that they would be a successful storefront and considered one of the better storefronts on PC?

Oculus would do well to stop with the anti consumer approach and go full on pro consumer and the people will follow. Instead they actually have a worse customer experience in more than one area. Hell, not offering refunds is absurd. When trying to compete with a near monopoly level competitor, you have to meet or beat what the customer is already accustomed to. Oculus is doing almost nothing right in the consumers eyes and they are paying for it.

They actually think that exclusives will give them a shot at competing with steam… Origin has STRONG exclusives and they knew they had to beat steam bigtime on what steam was lacking, in regards to the consumer experience.

I mean, I guess if your intention is to target like 5% of the market you could try to emulate Origin. Other than that I can’t really argue with anything you said. It’s just really hard to compete with a monopoly, even employing the best possible practices. Usually you need to provide some sort of serious market disruption rather than just better customer service. No one’s taking down Facebook or Google with customer service, meanwhile they found themselves in the position they are by causing disruption.

KDmP_Raze

I am saying that the only way to compete with a market leader is find their weaknesses in the customer experience they give and capitalize on it. Ultimately you are trying to sway the mind of the consumer so anti consumer practices and things that create bad PR should be last on the checklist of ” the road to high VR marketshare”.

It’s not like I’m saying improving customer experience will have a negative effect on market share, it just won’t move the needle like a disruptive technology, particularly when challenging a monopoly.

Hey, I wish I could play every video game ever made on my Mac, but there you have it. Exclusives make the world go round for now. As for Steam, I believe they have about 600% more games availabe on their marketplace than the nearest competitor, soooo… that puts them at about 80% of their offerings standing as exculsives by default…

Doesn’t matter since you are expected to pay $700+ to play other VR games and no one would stand for that.

They would soon hack Oculus games to work with Vive before forking over that much.

Can’t stop determined hackers and pirates.

ummm…

but valve does NOT own HTC. oculus could have been a hardware company – and we can debate the viability of that. they could have sold HMDs with an open platform and get residuals off of steam; it is not impossible – i mean valve HELPED oculus exist. What happened was that oculus over extended themselves with facebook. flew too close to the sun and are too stubborn to turn around. they have pretty deep pockets and intellectually stubborn people like you to keep them around tho.

If they owned HTC they’d be in court right now. It’s a good way to capitalize on an existing monopoly without causing legal troubles.

What you say is true; Oculus could have run off a different business model from the start, but they had no reason to believe the one they planned on wouldn’t work until Valve pulled a 180 and stepped into the market. Now their back is against the fence. It’s hard to go back to the drawing board once you’re 3/4 of the way through construction.

I’m also interested in your “flew too close to the sun” comment.

Klasodeth

Considering the well-documented history of Valve’s prototype VR headsets, I find it hard to believe that anyone could have had reason to think Valve wasn’t interested in bringing a VR headset to market. It sounds to me like Valve wanted to partner with Oculus to put a VR headset on the the market, and when that deal fell through they partnered with HTC instead.

ummm…

i think he wants to argue that if you are forced to please folks then you can never win……thats what i can gather from his ramblings.

ummm…

again with the monopoly business. id imagine that there is an elaborate backdoor deal that valve has with HTC that is basically a front. maybe you want to say that valve is not paying taxes on that backdoor revenue either. maybe you want to say that HTC doesn’t even benefit from the deal. keep the ridiculousness coming. and yes, customer service does create disruptive tech. look at the apple store.

Yes, except the deal isn’t eloborate and it’s entirely through the front door. They get a cut of every sale. And it pushes more sales through their monopoly software platform. And I’m sure they pay taxes on it. It just changes things enough to avoid monopoly law.

Only R&D creates disruptive technology. Like John Carmack’s vision I mentioned a few replies back. Customer service just creates happy customers, which is nice, but it’s more like performing regular maintenance on your car than say, adding a nitrous booster.

ummm…

I’m gonna read through your answers, but let me know what you think of this comment I saw over at the kotaku article:

No one who only has one platform likes it a lot when content he/she’d like comes out only on another platform.

Also: yes, FB/Oculus didn’t handle some things ideally in the past few weeks.

Also, as developer, too, i would like it if some things are made a standard across all big VR devices so it is not like developing for a completely different platform with quite different input types at least quicker.

I want proper roomscale support and Motion controllers on all major VR platforms, not just one, like yesterday =)

That all said, it makes me wonder why so many have such big rage against exclusives on VR headsets, while they seemingly accept PS 4, Xbox One or PC exclusives.

Some then argue that the PS 4 and XBox One are actually different platforms whereas VR headsets would be like just an accessory.

First: Different accessories have exclusives in many cases, too.

Second, more importantly: Right now the VR headsets capabilities actually differ more, and would argue for them being different platforms where it makes sense to have different games more than the PS4 and Xbox one differ in hardware.

Really, both of those consoles are mostly standard PC architecture devices, both usually used for most games with controllers which are very similar.

So besides one having a bit better architecture in specs and hence allowing to run the games a bit better and/or at higher framerate/resolution, for most of the games, they allow the same content with same controls and interaction.

On VR side though, the Oculus Rift right now does not have motion controllers yet nor supports as large roomscale VR as the Vive does.

Yes, both are devices one connects to a pc, but the main differentce affecting the content/gameplay/interactive experience between the two as a whole is the VR device and it’s controllers and roomscale tracking or not there.

It really does make a huge difference when in a game you can move your arms/hands around and pick up objects and swing them around and for example in a shooting game aim over obstacles or around cover or for example duck or even lay down on the floor and this is all reflected in the game. And this all is only possible on the Vive right now on that level.

For both the Vive and Rift one needs a high powered pc, which could in fact use the exact same components for both.

But the hardware features of the Vive are so much different (allowing more) that if a game makes good use of the Vive motion controllers and roomscale VR, that game can not be replicated at all on the consumer rift right now, because it has no such big tracking area support nor motion controllers.

That may change once the rift gets it’s new roomscale tracking camera (or what else they end up with for roomscale tracking) and their touch controllers.

But right now, yeah, one can have very different games on the Vive than are controllable/interacteable as intended on a Rift.

But the other way around, the Vive already supports all input/controls/experience types on technical side which one could do on the rift, since yes, of course one can also use a vive with usual joypad controls.

So due to that, not all Vive games would make sense to play on a Rift, but all Rift games could on technical side be totally played with full functionality and controls as intended on the Vive.

While i like it when the VR platforms offer the same functionality as possible, i understand that Oculus would want to make their platform attractive by tying games to it as (timed) exclusives, since, well, otherwise everyone halfway informed would buy a Vive instead of a Rift, at least until the touch controllers and proper roomscale support hardware comes out for the rift so it can be used for those games making cool use of such awesome functionality, too.

Steam, Valve and the Vive in theory and officially are open and support other options, which is cool, but in reality, the Vive hardware allows to do more right now, so one can make games for it which are not well or at all playable on a rift with full functionality/controls and interaction as intended (of using the vive’s motion controllers and roomscale VR), so they sorta even if maybe not intending/intentionally planning to, that way automatically get exclusives,again, at least until the rift’s touch controllers and roomscale support hardware come out.

So yeah, no matter if one likes it or not, at least for a while, there will be exclusives on both in one way or the other, on the Vive because it allows to have games one can’t play the same way on the Rift, on the Rift because they pay for (timed) exclusives.

Matt R

Wait. What? Are you saying Origin is better than Steam as a joke because he said Valve stole the headset idea from Oculus and it’s really the other way around or do you really think Origin is better than Steam?

“All is fair in love, war, and business”
-Me, somewhere in this thread

It’s definitely business. It’s just very, very, dirty, sneaky business. Valve definitely knows what they’re doing. It was a sweet, dick move. It also pushed Oculus into the corner that everyone is wailing about.

Gerald Terveen

yes – being a consumer friendly marketplace would certainly ruin Oculus and drive away potential customers …. that makes so much sense.

I think you misunderstand my position. None of this is consumer friendly. None of it is an indicator of a healthy marketplace. None of it would have happened if Valve hadn’t attempted to exploit it’s monopoly.

Unfortunately Valve’s senseless move into the market and Oculus’ subsequent reactive protectionist policies have actual put Oculus customers in the best possible position. They are able to play every game. It is customers who purchase other headsets who are at a disadvantage; thus Oculus attempts to apply the only pressure they can by employing a tactic that Valve is unable to without poking the bear that is monopoly law.

If Valve had intended to encourage competition rather than squash it they would never have abused their market position. They’ve created this atmosphere of unfriendly consumer practices.

ummm…

you make it seem as if valve had won just by releasing a headset. market forces work on utility or the appearance thereof. i wish valve never helped oculus so that i wouldn’t have to see such a ridiculous argument.

yeah valve helped develop the tech behind oculus with palmer and they are evil. yes the fact that steam has built the largest digital store over a decade is SO UNFAIR! yeah facebook is just a little nothing compared to valve. get a grip buddy. are you 12?

Don’t think Valve is evil, I’m just countervailing the mainsteam view of Valve as saint, Oculus as demon by providing a shifted perspective. I’m happy for Valve and cheered them on as they grew Steam from the ground up as the rest of the industry slept. I find humor in people neglecting the evidence of their monopoly on PC game distribution offering an unfair advantage in their ability to compete while bringing to market hardware that targets the very market they hold monopoly in.

As to the Facebook comment, I’m sure they’ll eventually bail little old Oculus out when the time comes to transition their business to the mainstream, but subsidiaries are meant to attain solvency in their own right. This leads Oculus to their current strategies of protectionism, caused by Valve’s entering into the market with a headset.

OculusSteam

You can use the OpenVR SDK, which is made by Valve, to create games running on the HTC Vive without Steam.

Steam is a monopoly, yes, but a company merely being a monopoly doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Trying to create a competitor to Steam using tactics such as walled gardens, which Oculus is using, that’s completely wrong.

To be fair and impartial, Valve and Oculus aren’t perfect, and both companies may have made mistakes. Let’s stop this useless arguing here.

Robert Suddath

Oculus launched first and had massive publicity. Sadly, Oculus thought that the hype over they’re product would never end and that people would buy the product, so they thought they could be uncooperative and rule the VR market. Valve silently came in with a great product with third party games so good that making their own was unnecessary. They made advances in VR that trumped Oculus’ product and managed to stop exclusive games. And you said that Oculus is the good guy? You cannot blame Valve for getting into the VR market. They have a great product and if they had stayed out of the market room scale wouldn’t exist, the OpenVR platform wouldn’t exist. And over two hundred very good games that will now be available for touch controllers would not exist. Valve tried to make VR as open as possible. And your calling Valve the bad guy? Oculus had so many chances to make VR open platform but they refused, you can love Oculus, but it doesn’t mean that they’re the good guys. Oculus just seems lazy and unimpressive because their games are inaccessible. You can’t make Valve a bad guy. Both companies are pretty much equally funded and Valve just chose to be the better man because it was a better idea and business strategy. Don’t blame Valve for Oculus messing up.

Andrew Jakobs

Please bear in mind, the only reason why Valve is supporting the Oculus set, is because it will sell more games on their platform, everything valve does is to make sure people will be using THEIR steam platform..

Bryan Ischo

Well, everything except locking out games from using SteamVR that were not sold on steam. That would be an act that actually would accomplish what you are accusing them of.

The moment that they disallow SteamVR to be used by any game that was not downloaded using steam, is the moment your point is valid. Until then, what you say is simply false.

Pete

Well said!

I don’t know if this makes Steam look better or if this makes Oculus look worse. Oculus’s PR gets worse everytime I look in the news. They need to do something drastic to regain the support of VR community.

TechnoHunter

All of you Steam Fanboys do not understand the point of pushing content,all in all Oculus was not wrong in what they did with pushing developers to their exclusivity because of funding their projects further! Valve will not even make content, and therefore is leaving it up to the developers to supply them content to make money. Good move on the controller support, but where is the content?

ummm…

valve and htc have a 100M dollar grant program. although you will probably say that that isn’t supporting the community enough. im utterly baffled by your upset with valve. valve was very integral to the tech behind oculus and therefore VR. im not getting down on oculus, but i just dont like many of their moves. how about this. you just be happy with the fact you can buy and play seated and “standing” experiences on any store you want and let me slum it on the open vr platform that steam has with its anemic content. you seem to be a bit more of a fanboy than you think.

TechnoHunter

Since you stated I am a fanboy, I would like to point out that I did not emulate such an aspect. I did not say that I only like the Rift and not the HTC Vive hardware. Just that I do not like how Valve’s direction was on the lack of content being mass produced. Valve is not pushing any devs to make content, was my main statement. How do you know, that I do not own both a Rift and a Vive? Also it was HTC that came to Valve for the hardware without their partnership we would not be where we are today.

ummm…

i can’t understand all of your points. Possibly english isnt your first language, which is an observation and not an insult. I think it is fantastic that you may be able to speak multiple languages.

However, you repeat that valve isn’t supporting developers but their early access program as well as the 100M dollar grant program is lost on you?

would you say any hardware/software developer is MASS producing content for VR right now, and should we expect it so early in the cycle? I dont think you can call the current oculus home catalog “extensive”. Your opinions on valve and oculus seem to be utterly disjointed from the physics of emerging market forces and actual FACTS on the ground.

TechnoHunter

You got serious issues, should get those checked.

ummm…

lol so the better strategy is to lock people out so they dont have access to content? wanting people to experience the art they created is bad? do you think oculus and facebook are a vr non profit?

TechnoHunter

Pushing content for both platforms is the only way we get VR to succeed at this point, stop hating so much where all this raging does nothing for the community as a whole.

ummm…

I don’t hate. I find it frustrating that people can’t see the forest for the trees. I don’t even think we disagree. Why do u think we do?

Shepard

I don’t care, as more games for touch as better, in this case Valve is the “good guy”, they allow Oculus people play Valve games that require touch controllers. Oculus and Facebook is ‘corporate” guy, they making sure that everything they do brings profit. Not saying it’s good or bad, a bit greedy yeah, but that’s just the way the cookie always crumbles…

ummm…

well steam isn’t allowing oculus support for free. they are getting a cut of all those games sold on their store!

Felix Andersen

Great news for Rift users. They will benefit from the Vive betting on motion-controls early on, and now there already is a substantial library of room-scale motion-controlled games on Steam.

BTW, Rifters: don’t believe Oculus when they tell you that you can’t do 360° room.scale, people have gotten it to work. There’s no need to only buy games that are made for 180° only – but even then, there are tons of mainly “forward facing” games as well on Steam (Space Pirate Trainer, Audioshield, Holoball and many more. The Gallery: Call of the Starseed for example has the ability to rotate your playspace, so you can rotate it to always be “looking forward”).

Hope to play some matches with Rifters soon, either shooting each other in the face in Hover Junkers or playing some nice pool in Pool Nation VR!

David Palomino

Actually it is good for oculus because the vive basically has no exclusives. So more will buy the oculus because of their exclusives like with the PS4 to the XB One

No one who only has one platform likes it a lot when content he/she’d like comes out only on another platform.

Also: yes, FB/Oculus didn’t handle some things ideally in the past few weeks.

Also, as developer, too, i would like it if some things are made a standard across all big VR devices so it is not like developing for a completely different platform with quite different input types at least quicker.

I want proper roomscale support and Motion controllers on all major VR platforms, not just one, like yesterday =)

That all said, it makes me wonder why so many have such big rage against exclusives on VR headsets, while they seemingly accept PS 4, Xbox One or PC exclusives.

Some then argue that the PS 4 and XBox One are actually different platforms whereas VR headsets would be like just an accessory.

First: Different accessories have exclusives in many cases, too.

Second, more importantly: Right now the VR headsets capabilities actually differ more, and would argue for them being different platforms where it makes sense to have different games more than the PS4 and Xbox one differ in hardware.

Really, both of those consoles are mostly standard PC architecture devices, both usually used for most games with controllers which are very similar.

So besides one having a bit better architecture in specs and hence allowing to run the games a bit better and/or at higher framerate/resolution, for most of the games, they allow the same content with same controls and interaction.

On VR side though, the Oculus Rift right now does not have motion controllers yet nor supports as large roomscale VR as the Vive does.

Yes, both are devices one connects to a pc, but the main differentce affecting the content/gameplay/interactive experience between the two as a whole is the VR device and it’s controllers and roomscale tracking or not there.

It really does make a huge difference when in a game you can move your arms/hands around and pick up objects and swing them around and for example in a shooting game aim over obstacles or around cover or for example duck or even lay down on the floor and this is all reflected in the game. And this all is only possible on the Vive right now on that level.

For both the Vive and Rift one needs a high powered pc, which could in fact use the exact same components for both.

But the hardware features of the Vive are so much different (allowing more) that if a game makes good use of the Vive motion controllers and roomscale VR, that game can not be replicated at all on the consumer rift right now, because it has no such big tracking area support nor motion controllers.

That may change once the rift gets it’s new roomscale tracking camera (or what else they end up with for roomscale tracking) and their touch controllers.

But right now, yeah, one can have very different games on the Vive than are controllable/interacteable as intended on a Rift.

But the other way around, the Vive already supports all input/controls/experience types on technical side which one could do on the rift, since yes, of course one can also use a vive with usual joypad controls.

So due to that, not all Vive games would make sense to play on a Rift, but all Rift games could on technical side be totally played with full functionality and controls as intended on the Vive.

While i like it when the VR platforms offer the same functionality as possible, i understand that Oculus would want to make their platform attractive by tying games to it as (timed) exclusives, since, well, otherwise everyone halfway informed would buy a Vive instead of a Rift, at least until the touch controllers and proper roomscale support hardware comes out for the rift so it can be used for those games making cool use of such awesome functionality, too.

Steam, Valve and the Vive in theory and officially are open and support other options, which is cool, but in reality, the Vive hardware allows to do more right now, so one can make games for it which are not well or at all playable on a rift with full functionality/controls and interaction as intended (of using the vive’s motion controllers and roomscale VR), so they sorta even if maybe not intending/intentionally planning to, that way automatically get exclusives,again, at least until the rift’s touch controllers and roomscale support hardware come out.

So yeah, no matter if one likes it or not, at least for a while, there will be exclusives on both in one way or the other, on the Vive because it allows to have games one can’t play the same way on the Rift, on the Rift because they pay for (timed) exclusives.

kazRium

I don’t own a Vive, but I own a Rift, and I really think Oculus would benefit from opening the Oculus Home store to all VR headsets. It feels like Oculus is trying to sell headsets and not the VR platform, and right now they should be trying to get as many people as they can excited in VR regardless of whether they are wearing a Vive or an Oculus Rift. Both headsets are about to be in a even bigger consumer battle when PSVR launches later this year, and I would rather have a united front going into that war than a divided one. I highly doubt there will be many people that purchase an Oculus/Vive & a PSVR, it is going to be one platform or the other.